While I never personally served, military service has played a significant role in my upbringing ( -----------> ).

I'm proud to live in Miami Springs, Florida - a community with its own (two!) monuments to the human cost of freedoms that are all-too-easy to take for granted, and where we hold regular gatherings to reflect, as we honor and remember all of those who served. Memorial Day marks just such a gathering.

As a 15-year resident of the Springs, I barely even qualify as a "newcomer" by community standards. Consequently, some of the names ring familiar to me based on family members I know; but their full stories are a mystery. Further, I worry we are in danger of having those stories lost to history. I'd really like to help prevent that, and I am asking for your help to do so.​Over the past couple of years, I've done my best to research the names on the plaque and to look for additional names that might be "missing" somehow. The internet, military records, and back issues of the Miami Herald have been of some assistance, but I know there is a lot more information out there.

Over the next couple of days, I'll be putting up pages here for each of the six men named on the memorial, as well as the names of three others I've found, who seem to belong there, but are missing.

Please pass the word along to your friends and family:

If you have any memorabilia, old yearbooks, photographs, or just good stories about these men of Miami Springs who were loved and lost, I'd really be gratified to hear from you. You can email me at springsobserver@gmail.com, and we will see how well we can grow these stories.

Ultimately, I'd like to see more information on the memorial than simply the names. Perhaps we could add other information such as dates of birth and death; where they served; their rank, unit and service branch; and any decorations they may have earned. But, one step at a time...

Here are our men, with the basics I was able to track. Some of the information, as you'll see, is spotty.

Just because you do not take an interest in politics, does not mean that politics won't take an interest in you.

- Source unverified, but attributed *all over the internet* to the Greek philosopher Pericles...which merely underscores the hazards of copying someone else's research instead of looking it up for yourself.